‘House Of The Dragon’ Finally Sets An August Premiere
by Erik Amaya
House of the Dragon is finally coming to HBO.
The cable channel announced Wednesday its first Game of Thrones prequel will debut August 21st. Set nearly 200 years before GoT, it will dramatize the Dance of Dragons — a civil war within House Targaryen which amplified the decline of their dragons and began a diminishing of their overall power. As the program begins, King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) names his daughter Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) to succeed him on the Iron Throne, but various power players use this break of tradition to upend Westerosi politics. The series also features Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans.
Although the first GoT spinoff to make it to air, it is by no means the first to be developed or the last in HBO plans to continue George R.R. Martin‘s world of Ice and Fire. The network famously held an informal competition to develop four or five prequel ideas with a pilot script from Kick-Ass‘s Jane Goldman that Martin referred to as “The Long Night” winning out. It was shot by director SJ Clarkson and starred Naomi Watts. Months later, HBO decided not to pick up that series and instead gave a series order to House of the Dragon, based on Martin’s supplementary tome, Fire & Blood.
One or two of the other prequel concepts may still be under development with a whole slew of new ideas also baking. One is a seeming House of the Dragon spinoff centering on Toussaint’s Lord Corlys Velaryon as a younger man on the high seas, a program based on Martin’s Dunk and Egg stories, and an animated series. But that’s only a fraction of the concepts in play. One imagines the success of House of the Dragon will determine the fate of a lot of these ideas.
House of the Dragon makes its way to HBO on August 21st.